Russian application satellites

Although
vast majority of satellites that the Soviet Union developed during its existence had originated
as defense-related systems, many of them were slowly making their way
into civilian sectors of the Soviet and, later, Russian economy. During the post-Soviet period, many spacecraft combined
their military and civilian roles, while a number of satellites was built specifically
for civilian purposes.

Above: In 2009, the Russian government promised to orbit a whole constellation of Earth-watching satellites.

For the period 2008-2015, the Federal Space Program approved three Elektro meteorological spacecraft and two Arkon-2 satellites for radar sensing of the Earth surface.

With the launch of Kanopus-V, Zond-PP, BKA and Yubileiny-2 (MiR) satellites during 2012, Russia deployed as many as nine Earth-watching cameras in orbit. In the same year, Russian officials promised to orbit 26 remote-sensing satellites by 2020. In August 2013, RIA Novosti news agency quoted the head of the Russian forest agency, Rosleskhoz, Andrei Zhilin as saying that in a previous year the organization had been acquiring up to 80 percent of satellite imagery from its foreign partners, but by 2013 around 60 percent was coming from abroad and the rest from Russian satellites. In November of the same year, the head of the nation's weather service, Rosgidromet, Aleksandr Frolov told RIA Novosti that seven satellites planned for launch in 2014 and 2015 would service the agency, among them Meteor and Arktika satellites.

In 2014, Roskosmos drafted a new Federal Space program, which would extend from 2016 to 2025. According to the document, a number of Russian civilian satellites operating in orbit would increase from 35 in 2015 to 76 in 2025. During the same period, a number of communications satellites would increase from from 15 to 36, remote-sensing satellites from 10 to 27 and scientific satellites from 2 to 10. Up to 14 satellites would be used for meteorological observations. (713)

RECENT DEVELOPMENTS

NPO
Mash to build its first comsat

2001
Aug. 16: NPO Mashinostroenia, based in Reutov, demonstrated a full-scale
mockup of the Ruslan-MM communications satellite and a full-scale payload
section of the Strela booster, which is expected to boost the Ruslan-MM
into initial orbit.

On
June 22, 2001, NPO Mash won a contract from Russian satellite communications
provider Intersputnik, which calls for the launch of the two Ruslan-MM
comsats. The satellites will become the part of the constellation, which
could eventually include as many as 100 spacecraft. As of July 2001, Interpsutnik
also signed contracts with Khrunichev and NPO PM, who would supply two
satellites each.

According
to the terms of the contract with NPO Mash, the first Ruslan-MM has to
be launched 30 months after first funds are delivered by Intersputnik,
presumably in September 2001. The second Ruslan-MM is expected to fly
four months later.

Both
637-kilogram satellites will be launched by the Strela booster into the
initial orbit and then spend around 150 days climbing to their final geostationary
orbit using electro-reactive engines. The weight of the spacecraft at
the final orbit is expected to be 560 kilograms.

NPO
Mash currently hopes to test-fly the Strela booster for the first time
in the second or third quarter of 2002. The launch is expected to take
place from the silo facility in Baikonur,
built from UR-100N ICBM. The Strela derived from the UR-100N ICBM, originally
developed at NPO Mash.

The
Strela's operational launches are expected beginning in the fourth quarter
of 2002 from Svobodny Cosmodrome in the Russian
Far East.

NPO
Mash also develops Condor-E satellite platform designed to carry radar
remote-sensing and optical imaging payloads. The spacecraft is an "export"
version of a classified project financed by the federal government. Both
satellites would be launched on the Strela booster.

Ukraine
to build satellite for Egypt

Posted:
2001 Nov. 1

Ukrainian
space officials inked a deal last month to build and launch a satellite
for the Egyptian government. According to the contract, signed in Egypt
on October 24, the KB Yuzhnoe design bureau, based in the city of Dnepropetrovsk,
and a group of industrial sub-contractors in Ukraine will develop and
build the satellite within next three years. The deal was reached during
a visit to Egypt by a group of Ukrainian space officials led by Stanislav
Konyukhov, Designer General of KB Yuzhnoe and Yuri Alekseev, director
of KB Yuzhnoes production plant.

Earlier
this year, KB Yuzhnoe came out a winner among several bidders around the
world to build the spacecraft for the Egyptian government, KB Yuzhnoe
representative said. The Egyptian satellite, which will be used for remote-sensing
applications, is expected to have an operational lifetime of five years.
The spacecraft will be launched by the Dnepr-1 booster.

KB
Yuzhnoe used to be a major manufacturer of military
and civilian spacecraft in the
former Soviet Union. In the post-Cold War period, the financially struggling
company developed several versions of the orbital platforms, which could
be adapted for needs of the commercial customers. With a weight ranging
from 59 to 153 kilograms, such standardized satellites can carry from
10 to 100 kilograms of payload respectively.

Zenit-2
lofts a cluster of satellites

Posted:
2001 Dec. 10

The
Zenit-2 rocket delivered the Meteor-3M remote-sensing satellite from Baikonur
Cosmodrome's Site 45 on December 10,
2001. Along with the 2,477-kilogram Meteor, the Zenit-2 was carrying a
cluster of international payloads with the total weight of 188 kilograms.
It included Moroccan MAROCTUBSAT and Pakistani BADR-R satellites. Also
onboard were the Compass spacecraft developed at KB Mashinostroenia in
the city of Miass and designed to test the techniques of predicting earthquakes,
and the Reflector experiment developed by NII KP design bureau and designed
to monitor "space junk."

All
five spacecraft were inserted into a 1020-kilometer orbit with an inclination
99 degrees toward the Equator.

This
launch was originally expected in December of last year, however it was
continuously delayed mainly due to the problem with the US-build SAGE-III
instrument installed onboard the Meteor-3M. This was the 35th launch of
the Zenit rocket from Baikonur.

Kosmos-3M
launches navsat

Posted: 2002
Sept. 27

The Kosmos-3M booster delivered a Nadezhda-M ("Hope") navigation satellite
on September 26, 2002, after the launch from Russia's northern cosmodrome
in Plesetsk.

The blastoff
took place at 19:30 Moscow Time, the Russian Space Forces announced. The
Nadezhda-M satellite entered a 987.4 by 1,022.1-kilometer orbit with the
inclination 83 degrees toward the Equator.

The Nadezhda-M
carries COSPAS-SARSAT equipment designed to relay distress signals from
the ships around the world.

According to
official statistics it was the 405th launch of the Kosmos-3M-type booster
and the 1934th space launch from Plesetsk.

Former spysat enters Earth-watching business

Posted: 2006
June 16

A new Russian satellite based on a military reconnaissance platform joined a crowded field of commercial remote-sensing.

The Soyuz-U rocket blasted off from Baikonur Cosmodrome's Pad 5 at Site 1, on June 15, 2006, at 12:00:00.193 Moscow Time, carrying the Resurs-DK-1 No. 1 spacecraft. The payload successfully reached orbit eight minutes later, according to the official Russian sources.

A Russian rocket lifted off Sunday with a cluster of five satellites, among them a pair of new-generation spacecraft inaugurating platforms for future scientific and commercial applications.

A Soyuz-FG/Fregat rocket blasted off from Site 31 in Baikonur on July 22, 2012, at 10:41:39 Moscow Time, carrying Russian Kanopus-V No. 1 remote-sensing satellite along with a similar BKA spacecraft built for the government of Belarus. As secondary payloads, the mission carried a Russian MKA-FKI science satellite, an exactView satellite for a Canadian company and a TET-1 experimental satellite funded by the German space agency, DLR.

According to the Russian space agency, the Fregat upper stage separated from the third stage of the launch vehicle at 10:50 Moscow Time and started its own flight including five firings of its main engine.

All five payloads reached orbit successfully. BKA separated from the Fregat at 11:26 Moscow Time, followed by Kanopus-V at 11:31, TET-1 at 11:33, exactView-1 and MKA-FKI at 13:00:33 Moscow Time, when flying over the Pacific Ocean beyond the communication range of Russian ground stations. The Fregat upper stage then conducted a deorbiting maneuver and reentered the Earth atmosphere at 13:50:53 Moscow Time. A ground control team responsible for MKA-FKI spacecraft confirmed establishing normal contact with the satellite shortly after it had entered the communication range at 13:55:21 Moscow Time. Industry sources also reported that Kanopus and BKA satellites established contact and downlinked telemetry during the second orbit of the mission.

Both Russian spacecraft onboard this Soyuz rocket represented new types of standard carriers, which are scheduled to be customized for future missions. The Kanopus platform is intended primarily for remote-sensing commercial applications, while a smaller Karat bus is well suited for a wide variety of low-cost science experiments. Both platforms already have a backlog of future missions waiting for launch.

On October 25, 2012, Russian space agency, Roskosmos, formally announced a soliciation of bids for a tender to develop an Obzor-O four-satellite constellation of remote-sensing satellites at a cost of 5,088 billion rubles. The system would provide imagery of the Earth surface for the nation's civilian agencies such as Emergency Situations Ministry, MChS, Ministry of Agriculture, Russian Academy of Sciences and Russian Cartography Ministry. Obzor-O satellites were expected to provide imaging of the Earth surface in eight different ranges of spectrum including optical and infrared. Optical instruments would have a resolution of five meters and infra-red sensors would be able to detect details as small as 20 meters.

Russia to build its first nano-satellite

Published: 2012 Dec. 14

A Russian company will build its first nano-satellite dedicated to imaging of the Earth surface. In December 2012, Russian space agency, Roskosmos, awarded a 315-million-ruble contract to a startup company Dauria to develop a pair of 10-kilogram MKA-N satellites and launch them before Nov. 25, 2015. (MKA-N stands for "Small Spacecraft in Nano-class.) Satellites would be equipped with cameras capable of taking photos of the Earth surface with a resolution around 20 meters from an altitude of 450 kilometers. They would have to function in space for at least three years and to be as closely compatible as possible to the standard CubeSat design, which served as a basis for many student-built and experimental satellites in the West.

Along with the spacecraft itself, Roskosmos asked the contractor to develop a release mechanism, which would enable to deploy up to 24 such satellites in a single launch of the Soyuz rocket.

The agency favored Dauria's bid for the project over a lower cost proposal from a veteran of the Russian space industry -- TsSKB Progress in Samara, which offered Roskosmos to complete the project at a price tag of 297 million rubles.

On Dec. 17, 2012, Russian space agency, Roskosmos, solicited bids for a tender to develop a radar-carrying Obzor-R remote-sensing satellite. The new-generation spacecraft aimed to replace the Arkon-2M project, which was canceled in 2012. The agency allocated 3,604,800 thousand rubles ($116.3 million) for three years of development work ending on Nov. 25, 2015. The agency put a deadline for the submission of bids for the tender at Jan. 15, 2013, and scheduled to announce a winner on January 24.

Russian satellites to monitor forest fires

In December 2012, Russian forest ministry, Rosleskhoz, and the emergency situation agency, MChS, requested the Russian space agency, Roskosmos, to conduct "technical imaging" of the nation's territory during 2013 in an effort to monitor forest fires. Until that time, the government agencies had still used data from infra-red sensors on foreign satellites, the head of Rosleskhoz Viktor Maslyakov, told RIA Novosti news agency. According to Maslyakov, his agency could finally get access to domestic capabilities in the field. Roskosmos could reportedly employ operational Meteor-M1, Elektro-L No. 1 and Kanopus-V No. 1 satellites for the task. In the past few years, a number of serious forest fires have raged in Russia, including a massive fire around Moscow that paralyzed life in the Russian capital for weeks.

In August 2013, the head of Rosleskhoz, Andrei Zhilin told RIA Novosti that by 2015, up to 15 Russian satellites would be involved in monitoring of forest fires, dramatically increasing the operational awareness about sources of fires, as well as about illegal logging.

IN
SERVICE: The overview of the Russian application and commercial spacecraft: